


Pop Goes the Weasel

by DarthSuki



Series: Five Nights at Freddy's and You [1]
Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive, This takes place in 2007, there will be more tags coming as the story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-03-31 20:15:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3991336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthSuki/pseuds/DarthSuki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>High School is long done for you, out of a home and in need of a job. Without a college degree to bolster yourself with, the only option left to you a job is Freddy Fazbear's, a pizzeria you knew about only through the investigations that took place there a couple years ago before the old building closed down in your town. But hey--looks like it's opened up again at a new place and they're hiring. Guess who got the second opening for the nightwatch?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Puppet

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone interested, [this is the voice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIJVEJshNFg) I personally envisioned and was thinking with when writing all of the Puppet's dialogue, though [this voice here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM4ZZjUBPM4) is also absolutely amazing.
> 
> So there isn't any confusion in future chapters, this series is technically in a more modern setting than the original games--20 years ahead, with the Fnaf 2 location/plot taking place in 2007. The first restaurant was closed in 2005 following investigations due to the murders of the original 5 children.
> 
> **This story was conceived and written prior to FnaF 4 being released, it won't be completely canon to what we know of the games, book, and the new FnaF: Sister Location.**
> 
> Phone Guy = Skott Keith  
> Purple Guy = Adrian Hampton
> 
> [More Information about the story, setting, characters and artwork](http://darthsuki.tumblr.com/tagged/pgtw)

The tune. The tune is what haunted you the most out of everything there was in that building. The fact was hilarious because--well, out of all the killer animatronics, the broken parts and bright, glaring eyes that always seemed to linger too-long down the end of the middle hallway….it was always that very tune that put you off the most. It echoed inside your head, a constant cycle of notes that made you feel as though there was something...hiding in the shadows, no matter how many times you felt as though your office was lit up with your waving flashlight. 

It wasn’t anything inherently creepy. It was just….too innocent--and that’s what made it unsettling, ironically enough, hearing it flow through the otherwise silent air of the Fazbear restaurant, as your glanced from camera to camera, mouth filled with coffee or a sandwich you brought with from the gas station down the street. The noise was soft, echoing all the way down from the prize corner at the end of the hall. 

And it just….the notes lingered, just long enough beside one another in your ears, enough to sound off all these flags in your brain--you brushed it off for as long as you could since, really, you had a tendency to watch way too many horror movies. Lots of ghost flicks seemed to use that whole ‘music box’ thing, and it just carried over to work. 

You always kept it wound up. Whatever that music box pleased with the tune never really had to worry-- it just became second nature to wind it back up, over and over again whenever you cycled through the cameras. Look, wind, flash, mask, take a bite of your sandwich or a sip of the coffee--rinse and repeat over and over again until the end of your shift. For the first couple hours that night, that’s all you did--

Until you don’t hear the music playing anymore. It was just--

Complete. 

Utter. 

Silence.

For a split second your mind is simply trying to wrap itself around the fact--the tune, as creepy and horrifying as it was deep down at your core, was simply something your ears had grown used to. The fact that it wasn’t there anymore left the entire space around you feeling empty, a void of nothingness only amplified by the fact that...you can’t…

You can’t wind it back up. Try as hard as you might, looking on in horrified agony at CAM 11. Your finger is on the screen, pressing with increasing force, but...nothing. The timer simply remains frozen like that, stuck on a depleted bar that fills you up with absolute, utter dread.

The music box isn’t winding. The music box /isn’t/ winding.

Ominous. Everything begins to feel....ominous. 

No sound, no nothing, even when you reset the tablet and try the music box again--still nothing, the button just a frozen little image on the screen that doesn’t seem to do anything when you press it. It’s not even as if the tablet doesn’t work, you don’t even hear it winding at all--there was always that click, that sharp, winding whirr that would echo down the hall from the prize corner whenever you did it, just another layer of reassurance you supposed that you weren’t going to get now.

Your eyes glued tight to the screen of the tablet, scanning the entire room for….whoever the music box was even suppose to placate. What was...one more animatronic to the bunch, right? Flash them with the light, put on the mask--no big deal. 

No matter how much you tried to prove that to yourself your finger was still pressing that button, still desperately trying to get it to work because oh god no, what’s going to happen now that the music box isn’t playing? The unknown of what would happen was worse than whatever your brain could come up with.

Your fear lasts at least a solid half-minute, and still….nothing. Nothing moved on the camera, nothing edged into sight at the end of the hall. You heard no footsteps or...bumping in the air vents.

Actually, as a matter of fact, that lack of anything made you even more on edge--not one animatronic moved. You could have sworn that Chica was hanging out a couple rooms down, just about ready to try climbing into one of the vents. When you looked to check her again she was gone, back in her proper position with the others. That’s...pretty damn odd, actually.

Your thoughts are quickly cut off by a sudden, sharp crash down the hall. Instantly your fingers are wrapped around the Freddy mask and your other hand is on your flashlight but….

“Just….just uh, normal noise….” You whisper in some piss-poor attempt to calm your nerves but….god, you can’t begin to put out the knowledge in your mind. The music box isn’t working, everything is silent and that--that noise. 

You check the cameras again--nothing, absolutely nothing. You can’t even figure out what fell down to make that crash, only knowing that it came from the other side of the building, from--

The prize corner.

Fuck it, just fuck it all to hell and back. 

“I’m just gonna go wind that damn thing,” You mutter, hiding most of the terror with anger in the tone of your voice. It was only 3 in the freaking morning and this--this entire ‘fearing for your life for no reason’ thing --you weren’t going to be able to survive three more hours of. You haven’t even been working for a whole week yet.

Ten minutes later had you down the hall, flashlight in hand and….feeling a bit better about everything, actually. You took the tablet with you to keep an eye on the cameras and nothing had moved even an inch--an inch!--since you left the office. Hell, not even Foxy, and he was probably the most twitchy of them all when it came to jumping from camera to camera.

You’re in the prize corner sooner than you can finish the curious thought, glancing your eyes and flashlight beam across the room. You’re not really sure what the music box or it’s winder is supposed to look like, though there isn’t anything in particular that sticks out to you in the room. Nothing with a crank or anything hooked up to the wall or...something. Curiosity wins easily over caution as you step in further, towards something that did catch your eye but obviously wasn’t anything music box related.

A giant...present? It looked thematically correct, since of course it is the /prize corner/ but...it still looked a bit ridiculous, just sitting there like that. You laughed for a moment, feeling most of the nervousness start dripping from your mind when simple interest started taking its place instead. What was inside the box?

You set the flashlight down on the counter, managing to keep it settled, standing on its base, just in the right way so the beam of light shines up against the pure-white ceiling and diffusing most of the light around the room, giving it this….interesting glow. At least it made everything visible. 

After making sure the only source of light wasn’t going to fall over, you turn your face over to the present box again, your eyes looking over it’s almost hilariously enormous size. Did they put the actual prizes inside or something? After all, it looked like it would be part of one of those contest things, a drawing maybe of some sort that would have kids filling out tickets with a number on them. 

The top isn’t locked at all of course, just sized so that it loosely fitted over the box itself. After wrapping your fingers around the opposite edges and pulling it up and off, you find that it’s….really light. Paper mache? Maybe--it doesn’t feel like metal, or plastic, but it was surprisingly light enough that you can even lift it up with one arm alone. The air feels a bit tense for a moment, your breath held in your chest as swift hands lift the top off of the box and within--

Nothing. It was just the box itself, the bottom lined with a dark, velvety looking fabric. Well, hold on, there was something. You had to tilt your head and lean in a little bit to see it and...ah, yeah. There was a little lump in the corner. You leaned in to grab it, fingers wrapping around something plush. 

It’s a soft Foxy doll in your hand when you lean back and pull yourself out. Heh, just one of those little toys they gave away during the day if kids had enough tickets. 

Foxy was decommissioned, technically, and he gave you plenty of grief in his animatronic form. But as a plush? He looked as happy and cartoonish as ever, with that little smile of his. You even considered pocketing it in your jacket pocket but….nah, you were already risking getting in trouble. Best to keep it where it’s supposed to be.

He’s really cute either way.

But that was certainly anticlimatic--nothing else was inside. Maybe it was just cleaned out daily or something? Eh. With that thought, you replace the top of the box, letting it sit in just the way it was before so nobody would notice--you didn’t want to risk getting scolded for touching anything since, after all, they said that you needed to stay in your work area during the early morning hours.

A little more searching yields a final and happy realization of the very item you came looking for--the music box. It sits in the far corner of the room and, ah yes, there is the crank on the side. There is a pile beside it, bent up and..broken, obviously. For a few moments you barely know what to make of it before you see the wire hanging off the side of the table the music box is sitting on and….

Oh. That’s what made the crashing noise. It’s a little unnerving actually, seeing all that intricate metal and bits just...fallen over the table and on the floor. Surely it was malfunctioning before that, because you still weren’t able to make the winder work then--

It still doesn’t explain how it fell over afterwards. Upon a closer inspection with you knelt down on the floor, you find the pieces are actually pretty damn solid. The table isn’t wobbly, there certainly isn’t a draft in the room.

How….did it fall? Confusion starts to lace itself within you, between your thoughts just as you start to realize that this is way beyond what you’re able to fix. Broken, bent metal pieces--that’s something you’ll have to bring up to management. 

Just as you begin to stand up and turn around to go collect your flashlight again, the room goes dark. Utter, complete darkness--making you almost gasp in surprise. The batteries must have gone out in your flashlight (though you certainly saw no telltale flicker), leaving you barely able to weave and shuffle your way back across the near-pitch black room (the only source of light being the ambient one outside the open doorway, reflecting off the tiles). It was...just barely enough light to get you back to the prize counter, where your flashlight sat. 

“Fuck,” You cursed, feeling a nervous, terrifying sense of anxiety start bristling through your nerves. Darkness in itself was scary, but in this place? It was downright horrifying. Curses flew from your lips as your hands start hitting the flashlight’s outer casing, over and over, maybe to get just the little bit of juice out of those batteries to lead you back to your office. You even flick your thumb over the light again, back and forth--that finally seems to do the trick, the light finally flickering back into a bright beam once more. “Thank god,” Your sigh is full of beautiful, thick relief. You finally flick the flashlight and your eyes back ahead of you to start walking and--

You are confronted by a face mere inches from your own.

The room, the air, everything around you erupts in a terrifying screech as it’s ripped right out of your lungs. Wide, open, empty eyes. Pure-white face, it all assaults your vision in a split-second of terror, as if everything you were taught was finally being thrown right back in front of your mind, replaying over and over in the frozen split-second before your legs can force you as far back as one single bound can get you.

_One more thing - don't forget the music box. It doesn't seem to affect all of the animatronics, but it does affect... one of them._

The sound of the manager’s voice rings in your ear as a reminder--he’d just told you that yesterday over the phone. One of them. It affects one of them. Blood starts racing, rushing through your ears as more of it begins to come into the beam of your flashlight which you managed to keep clutched in your hand, holding so tight that your knuckles are turning white. 

He (or what you assume is a he) doesn’t...have a face. That’s one of the first things you notice of the creature looming in front of you. Just a mask, a mask with void, empty sockets where it looks as though eyes should be, and a mouth that….is open wide in an almost toying smile with just as equal nothingness within. Rosy cheeks are painted on, as is solid, purple lines that fell from where the eye-holes on the masks were and--

He shifts closer to you. You let out another noise, weaker, as the first scream still felt as though it was echoing through your head, into your brain and ears and making everything ring. His limbs and body are thin, inhumanely so, and he almost seems to stretch over you like nothing but a shadow with only that mask--that bright, almost shining mask staring down at you with those empty, lifeless eyes. 

“Wh-What do you want!?” You demand in a loud, cracking voice. “Stay the hell away from me you--you--you puppet!” The flashlight is in your hand as though it’s a weapon, a sword, as if the beam of white light can do anything to stop the being from approaching and cutting that last meter or two keeping it away from your legs, your face.

“Music box….” A soft, light, echoing voice emanates through the air. It takes you a few moments to realize that it isn’t your ringing ears making up words, nor your thoughts going so insane you can’t tell what’s what anymore. It’s a legitimate voice, soft, but there--and it’s coming from the puppet, sing-songing. “....someone forgot to wind the music box~…” That face looks down at you and the being inches closer still, so close that you can see the puppet’s full, lanky body. He’s...small, but his height, fully extended, looming shadow--he has to be at least six feet or more. 

Horror moves through your body, your heart and lungs and everything in between as the being finally gets close enough to touch you. It’s as if he’s in slow motion, reaching out a hand, to….to touch your face--that’s when you finally cower and succumb to the fear, closing your eyes and giving into the fact that you simply fucked up. There’s no going back now, no retry, no restart--you fucked up and you’re dead, fucking dead. 

Nothing happens. You feel a few seconds pass--ten seconds and...still nothing. You feel perhaps a light breeze of air against your legs but otherwise….nothing. No pain, no blood, no death. Maybe the fear has finally gotten to you--made you see and hear things that weren’t there. You haven’t had much sleep for the last several nights so….yeah. You’ll just pick up your flashlight and go back to the office, forget about the whole music box thing.

But when you open your eyes, you don’t see the puppet animatronic looming above you anymore--

\--it’s because he’s right in front of your face again. Inches away, staring right into your soul with those empty, black holes for eyes. The puppet’s limbs lay around you, practically sitting himself down in your lap, arms up and pressing into the wall on either side of your head, his long, dangling legs sitting astride your hips.

At that point you’re too terrified to scream, too petrified with dread to do anything but sit there and stare back. And that’s when he starts talking again, in that same soft, ghostly voice as before. 

“Did you forget to wind the music box?~” It’s horrifying just how innocent the voice is, just like the tune of the music box itself--innocent and soft, yet the only thing filling the air to this horrifying place.

Something must have finally filled you with will again, enough so that you could remember how to move your lips and speak words of a reply. It’s hard to do, especially when you’re facing nothing but void holes and an almost creepy, empty smile inches away from the tip of your nose, but you manage out a little sigh. 

“I....I tried to,” You whisper, frozen and tense with fear. “The music box is... broken.” You don't even know if the animatronic will understand what you’re trying to tell it, as if he could begin to extrapolate on the concept of either something that’s broken, or the music box itself. The puppet continues to stare at you for a while before slowly, so damn slowly, turning his mask of a face over to look at the indeed broken, remote winding tool that was mere bits and pieces of metal. The look itself yields no response from the puppet, no change of expression (as if it really could change from that constant, open, empty smile).

“...I broke it.”

You swallow a lump in your throat as the puppet looks back at you again, head tilted in what might have been….curiosity?

“Excuse me?” You say, barely catching what he said and lesser still being able to filter it through your fear-strangled thoughts. 

“The music box….was broken.” The puppet almost seems to lean away from you for a moment, bringing his long, small, simple hands out in front of himself as if he needed to look them over. “...I broke it.”

Like a child. The puppet sounds like--...he sounds like a child. The expression itself on the mask doesn’t change--because there’s no way that he can--and yet you feel as though there’s something different in the way he looks at you. You might have assumed it to be guilt, but the voice--the voice sounds too...uplifted. Proud, perhaps, despite the very inhuman echo and depth of his tone.

Heart is still beating, fast and hard against your ribs. “W-why….did you….” Your voice starts to crack again before the question is finished, making you clear your throat, take a breath and…. The puppet’s not trying to kill you, not...not even looking at you anymore. Still you’re frozen still, body tense and feeling as if at any moment you could crumble into dozens of pieces from that terror alone. Like glass--you feel exactly like glass. “...Why did you break the music box?”

In barely a split-second, those eyes jerk right back to you, making you shake in shock as a new wave of terror cascades through your body. They’re not empty anymore, the eyes--white, tiny pinpricks of light glow in their center, staring right….at you… The puppet, for lack of any apparent name, lets out a sharp, high-pitched screech of laughter, which would have been more than enough for you to scramble all the way back to your office in the pitch black if he wasn’t sitting on you. Of course the being is light, lighter than what you’d even expect of a cat or something when--

“Wanted--” The puppet’s voice is less distant now as a seeming tone of enthusiasm drips through. “--wanted to make you come here. Come to me.” He looks almost proud of it, smashing the remote winder for the music box (the very thing that’s supposed to render him content). The masked animatronic is so proud, in fact, that you can’t help but actually smile. You’re terrified and you’re smiling, at this….this puppet who smashed up the remote winder to make you come looking at it--come looking...for it?

You’re not even able to open your mouth again to ask another question of ‘why’ before those dangly, thin arms start wrapping around your shoulders. At first terror fills you up, a bright, white-hot emotion taking over all of your senses. It’s quickly quelled when those arms don’t crush you, but instead just...hug you. They wrap around your shoulders firmly, but not tight, not at all enough to feel uncomfortable. 

“Always talking to the man on the phone,” The puppet whispers after he tucks his head beneath your chin, practically cuddling itself against your chest as you are left there in shock. This...isn’t at all what you would have held as an expected outcome of forgetting to wind the music box up.

As the icy-sense of shock starts to drip from your arms you return the gesture, slowly...wrapping them around that thin, surprisingly warm body. For the fact that this animatronic is made of cloth, metal and plastic pieces….he feels, for all intents and purposes, warm--or at least warm enough that there’s a short, little gasp at your lips.

The puppet seems to take that gasp as something or another, as he is quick to push his face harder beneath your chin, his arms tighter around your body. The….man on the phone? Oh--oh he meant…Skott, the...the manager. But why would that mean anything? The animatronic was smart enough to understand what a phone was--that someone was talking to you on the other line, giving you training for your job?

There’s simply too many questions to answer them all, chalking it up as a mystery just as you feel another pair of limbs wrapping around your waist. Instead of arms, it’s the puppet’s legs. He has effectively clung to you like a koala, which in itself should have earned some bit of amusement or laughter, but instead it only yields confusion for this...behavior. Everything you’ve been taught, been told, was that these animatronics were trying like hell to kill you--force your body into a suit that no human body should ever be able to fit in and then there's….this.

Quite the opposite of death, to be pretty blunt. 

You start, slowly, to try peeling the Puppet’s thin limbs off of you. You’re long gone from trying to find an explanation at this point. Try as you might though, the moment you lift your arms from around his body to pull him off, the being only tightens his hold--okay, not that’s definitely almost uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable--his grip is tight as a vice until you accidentally let out a little huff of pain and only then does he seem to loosen it again. It’s a warning though, and one that you don’t miss. 

“You obviously don't want to be….let go,” You whisper and get no response. The puppet is completely silent again, which is nearly as unnerving as when he spoke--leaving you to wonder what the hell was the next in line of a plan. You can’t stay, can’t just sit there in terror for the other animatronics to start roaming again at any given moment (the tablet is far out of your reach and on the floor, assuming that it didn’t break when you dropped it of course). So after a moment of almost useless thinking you decide on the plan, finally giving no shit about the animatronic plastered around your body. “I have to go back to my post--if you’re not going to let go of me Mr. Puppet, you’re coming with.” 

The puppet didn’t say anything, but he also didn’t start trying to tighten his limbs and nearly crush you again so you take it only as his silent acceptance. The tablet was collected, tucked under the arm that wasn’t holding loosely around the animatronic’s body, useless since he was holding on more than tight enough not to fall.

Confusion, complete confusion. The trip back to your office gave you no further scares, but time instead to let the questions start simmering in your head, mostly all on the subject of the eerily silent puppet hanging off your neck. It really was like a puppet, silent and unmoving--the only indication otherwise that you hadn’t just gone completely crazy for your time in the prize corner and just found a marionette doll to hang around your neck was that pressure. It was a pressure exerted by a being, a definite, living thing very much interested in holding onto you, around your neck and waist. 

At least he didn’t get in the way when you sat back in your chair, mask still (happily, it seemed) tucked against your throat. Well, that was an adventure. Crank’s broken, tablet’s got a cracked screen, and oh, you don't know--

You have a damn marionette animatronic hanging off you. He’s...not...hurting you, so that’s...comforting? Just tucked up like some sort of cat, but damn was he silent. No matter what you asked, what you said--hell, even when you tried pulling him off you again the only response you got was that same sharp warning of him tightening around you. Ah yeah, not coming off.

At least the other animatronics didn't seem keen on moving around. You lost the ability to look at almost three cameras because of the fucked-up screen on the tablet, so it’s certainly no loss of excitement for you, just sitting there and sipping at your coffee and--

“Oh hey, yeah--I forgot I gotta listen to that message.” There was one on the phone for you, one you didn’t get a chance to listen to because of all the insanity going on. You were waiting for everyone to settle down to listen through Skott’s advice since, well, it’s a hard lesson learned to try paying attention to his voice when every animatronic and his mechanic were out of place and trying to cram themselves in the vents.

That’s finally when you seem to get something from the puppet. Just as you’re leaning forward to hit the play button, the mask’s is up and right in your face again. No voice, no sound just--just it hanging right in front of your eyes and blocking your view. 

Holy fuck that was unnerving; finding those damn empty eyes again looking into yours with a hard expression, you swear, that only dared you to inch closer to that phone.

Suffice to say you don’t try to listen to the message. It’s not that important. The puppet seems to feel the same--the moment that you sit back in your chair he lowers his face again, but instead of pressing it back to your throat he just….sits there. You know he’s looking up at you, simply because you can catch the mask at the bottom of your vision. Staring up at you with those black eyes. It wouldn’t be so unsettling if he just...spoke, just said something--anything.

But he didn’t. Just like before, the office is filled with an uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and almost terrifying silence. 

It’s...going to be a long night.

….

You resort to talking to yourself at some point when your mental fortitude breaks, more or less, just so the air is filled with noise. No music box, no guy on the phone, no….puppet--you can’t really handle the silence all that well, so it’s pretty much your last resort.

“I’m….not sure what your deal is,” You start, trying so hard just to focus your gaze straight forward. “Breaking your music box….winder thing. You also apparently /really/ don’t like the phone. I mean, I don’t blame you since I’m not all that fond of using it either and well….” A fresh, cool breath fills your lungs. “Please...stop...staring at me like that.” Maybe just asking him would get you somewhere--maybe at least make him /move/. There’s nothing more terrifying than that mask and empty eyes than when it’s frozen like a statue. “It’s...really creepy actually. Uh….Totally not going to touch the phone I swear but….” 

After what felt like an eternity and much to your relief the marionette does in fact move. It’s not all that much, merely a sharp, sudden tilt of his head. You hoped it was in curiosity. The gaze doesn’t move though, because you can still feel those empty holes, that tiny pinprick of light acting as...pupils maybe? God, it gives you the creeps. 

“I don’t like the man on the phone.” 

The voice in your lap is sudden enough to startle you, make you shiver and peer down almost instantly at the being sitting there. “Wh-what?” You say half on instinct, since his words had almost no context to them. “You..don’t like…” You blink, confused, but then it begins to dawn on you--the man on the phone, your boss, the messages on the phone--that’s why he didn’t want you…

That makes a little sense. 

“Why don’t you...like the man?” You figure it’s safe enough to play along with both the puppet and your curiosity, if only it meant getting some of these questions answered and out of your brain. The assurance that you might just be having a dream or a nightmare is still floating around your thoughts, a whisper of possibility. “He’s not even really talking to me, those are just recorded messages and--”

“The man talks too much. Distracts you.” Big, wide empty eyes looking at you. The expression hasn’t physically shifted, but you feel it, a thread of jealousy, malice filling up the air around the puppet. “... doesn’t like me. But you…” He pauses as all sense of jealousy and malice drains away, and then there’s this noise--this definitively inhuman sound of laughter before the being goes silent and whispers, “...you like me.” 

You do? 

Of course you don’t say that, since there are a million reasons why that would be a most unfortunate response to this...thing.

_I'll be honest, I never liked that puppet thing...It's always...thinking and...it can go anywhere._

Luckily enough you don't even have to give any sort of answer, any indication of confusion before he’s eagerly explaining it to you instead.

“Give me gifts, yes--you give so many gifts to me. Nobody gives me gifts.” There’s something about his voice, his tone his….his enthusiasm that makes you blink. Gifts? You’d never left your post before tonight, never even /seen/ the animatronic himself besides the pictures hung up on the wall that the children drew during the day. You can’t even begin to imagine what this puppet means by you giving him gifts when--

Wait….

_You’re reminded by it. Something so, so small and stupid that it hadn’t even occurred to you then what you were doing and….what it meant. Back, almost a week ago, when you were given tours of the building, accompanied by your boss and coworker, the dayshift guard Adrian--he was pointing out all the various rooms to keep a particular eye on, the positions of the cameras and all the exits in the building itself. Jeremy Fitzgerald was beside him--the other night guard, constantly asking questions back and forth about the building._

_One of the rooms you had passed was the prize corner. You can remember it clearly now, everything within the room in it’s proper spot, lit up bright to show off all the colorful toys behind the counter, the overly-large present that you hadn’t even noticed._

_A small, soft little Foxy doll was on the ground. You never thought about it after, never even considered it anything other than some child having dropped it or knocked it over and…_

_It happened three times, all on the same tour. Every time you passed the room in trying to follow the man as he explained the job description, you’d always find that doll on the floor, even though you knew there hadn’t been kids in the room the entire day--the place was closed up since it was a Sunday. You...tried not to think much of it. Just put it back on the countertop._

The foxy plushie. Every single inch of your body turns to ice in the span of a moment, your breath stuck in your throat and everything in the universe seeming to collapse down on itself in a freakish, singular moment of pure realization that you’d overlooked. The plush in the box, sitting all alone, lumped up in the corner.

When you snap from your memories the puppet’s there, almost...almost waiting for you to look at him again, which you do with a shaky breath. With all that’s dawning on you, it’s hard to tell whether one’s supposed to feel terrified or...comforted. Certainly having answers are better than not having anything but questions right? Maybe?

For the moment at least, you’re leaning on the answers half.

The rest of the night seems to go smoothly--almost...eerily smooth, to be honest. For the rest of the night and into the last hour of your shift, not a soul seems to shit out of place. You’re of course in no place to complain. Having a night of peace from all the animatronics is certainly a breath of fresh air, but there’s something definitively creepy about there being /nothing/ going on--much like the feeling you got when the music box stopped playing.

You were just so used to it all, so accustomed to the sound of footsteps and the near-death feelings of Bonnie or Chica being in the office--in its absence everything just felt...off. You wouldn’t put it above the silence having something to do with the puppet of course, who remained as still as a statue in your lap for the entire time.

When the end comes you find yourself at an almost horrifying loss of knowledge. 

“Uh…” You can see the clock ticking closer to it, the end of your shift. Five minutes left and the marionette hasn’t budged, hasn’t so much as inched back towards the prize corner. It makes no sense, the programming is supposed to make all the animatronics reset in their positions for the daytime hours no matter /how/ close they were to killing you. But above all logic and rules you’d come to follow, the only things that kept and was still keeping you sane in that hellhole, the puppet….wasn’t moving. It was a solid weight on your lap. “Hey uh….you can...go back now. I have to clock out for my shift and uh….”

Nothing. He just keeps staring at you and that smile is /really/ starting to creep you out. 

“Aaalright then, see you’re quite fond of my lap. Fair enough.”

6 am comes without any change, clock ticking over and the alarm going off which would normally alert you of a triumphant night survived through the chaos of killer animatronics. But this time it only serves to drill the situation harder in your mind. 

Maybe he powered down? Turning him off and doing some sort of internal hard reset for….some reason or another, you’re not a mechanic nor have any sort of degree to make sense of any of it--that’s why you’re at Freddy Fazbear’s in the first place. No college degree, and no money to get one.

You’re about ready to laugh at the pure, ridiculous situation you got yourself in and still sure that some sleep deprivation has to do with a lot of it. Your hands reach up to the puppet’s body, which is so damn thin that you can feel the fingertips touch of both hands then you wrap them around it. He seems limp enough until--

Until you try to pull him off. For a moment you actually expect the puppet to fall limp, limps unfurling around your body and falling off your shoulders and waist and for you to chalk everything up to nothing less than an overly-interesting night when--

They tighten. Your heart stops, but only for a moment. Not powered down, certainly not reset and oh yeah, that clock is definitely reading 6:07 am right now.

Alright. You got this, nothing to worry about…

You collect your things as best you can from the desk--tossing out the trash from your food and coffee, clearing off some extra folders and paperwork. A note to your manager is quickly scribbled on a piece of spare notebook paper--just a reminder about the music box winder that needs to be looked at.

Skott’s office is on the other side of the building. There’s a little slot just beneath the window of the door, about the level of the door knob, where he’d asked you to put any notes in if you had a question or concern so he could read them. Since you were primarily night shift and he came in during the day, it was a pretty handy way of making sure you got some messages across.

There’s only so long that you can try ignoring the puppet as he hangs off of your neck and waist though, as it turns out. After dropping your note into the slot with your name signed on the back you feel him shifting around you. 

“What are you…” You ask in a whisper, taking no moment to stop walking as your feet tap down the hall from the management office to the prize corner. “Hey--don’t pull at my clothes--” A few more bumbled words of confusion falls from your lips as the puppet moves around and settles at last, just as you step into the doorway of the room you met him in originally.

It could have been nothing more than a figment of your imagination, but it almost felt as if he shivered when you stepped inside. When you stepped beside the open present box in the corner? That shiver wasn’t subtle anymore. It’s hard and obvious--a constant vibration against your back with that mask so obviously pressed into your hair and neck. Hand’s don't even need to try pulling at his limbs for him to tighten his grip on you again. It’s strong--far more powerful than you’d ever expect with limbs so damn thin--and makes it really hard to breathe.

“What’s wrong?” You ask, almost breathe out in a strained huff. Jesus christ--you weren’t even planning on pulling him off or anything this time--that option has been flung straight out the window, right along with your job when the boss found out you had (purposely or not) taken an animatronic out of the building. “Hey--jesus settle down….” He clings tighter, arms around your neck--not choking, not yet, but hard enough to give you one hell of a warning message that he’s downright terrified.

It...starts to dawn on you a little. You pause, and almost on a limb, whisper, “...I’m not...putting you in the box.” It’s a hunch, nothing more than an amalgamation of feverish opinion and theory only from fear and an ever-constant denying (but internal consideration) that this puppet was...more than a puppet. Robots didn’t feel fear.

_It's always...thinking and...it can go anywhere._

Regardless of reason or thought, your words seem to offer comfort for the puppet. He’s still shivering, but not nearly as much or as hard as he was just a few moments before you spoke. It does enough to confirm your suspicions. At least you know what’s /normally/ supposed to be inside the box.

“You’re afraid to be in there?” That in itself is unnerving. “But you have to be in there for the kids! Just uh--think about them! You give them all their prizes right?”

“It’s Sunday.” 

There is no level where you could try to feel comfortable with the puppet knowing that, let alone communicating that to you. Because it denotes that he knows that the building is closed on Sunday, and that in being closed, there are no children to entertain. He knows that telling you would void everything you just said. 

In all your life you’d never, ever, seen any level of computer or robot that was...able to make that level of assumption. 

“Touche,” You whisper in response, moments before leaning into the box and reaching in to grab the Foxy plush that is still indeed there--pressed up in the corner, just like you’d left him. The puppet is apparently too tightly pressed to your neck and back to realize what you’re actually doing (jesus, he must be terrified of that damn box), though when you stand up again and reach the plushie back for him to take, he’s more than eager to steal if from your hand.

The doll is quickly tucked between your back and his chest all the way back to your car after locking up the front doors of the building, since apparently he needed both arms around your shoulders and neck. 

Getting into the car isn’t nearly as bad as you might think it is, honestly, since you don’t even need to tell the puppet to move. He’s already twisting around to hang off your front again before a word slips past your lips. By the time you’re settled in the driver’s seat, you can feel the pressure of that Foxy doll again between your chest and the puppet’s. 

The head of the doll pokes up so that it’s staring at you with those golden, embroidered eyes and cartoonishly wide grin. They aren’t themselves all that bad when you glance down, hearing the car’s engine turn over--it’s the mask above them that keeps you glancing down again afterwards. 

“You...don’t have to stare at me you know,” You say, shifting gears and turning onto the empty main road towards your apartment complex. The sun has barely risen above the horizon, it’s warm light filling the car. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.” 

The puppet says nothing and still doesn’t move. Honestly, you’re at the point where it doesn’t nearly unnerve you as badly as it had a few hours ago, before you felt it have that one, sharp and obvious human emotion of fear when he thought you were going to force him back into the box. It took out some of the mojo, so to speak, in those empty eyes, made them feel...human. Relatable, at least, as though you could understand where some of that fear lay. 

The drive home is luckily uneventful. Despite your worries you’re not pulled over and not seen with that animatronic around your waist. After six hours of anxiety, confusion and fear, you really don’t need to add the questions of a confused cop who might wind up thinking you stole him from the nearby Fazbear’s building. There isn’t too many people living in the apartments near you either, and most of them seem to have relatively normal sleeping and working schedules so you know the majority of them all are still tucked away in their comfortable, warm beds.

Carrying the puppet up the stairs to your second-story apartment almost feels like you’re carrying a child--a child that had eyes of the void and limbs of steel, but a child nevertheless. He’s went back to nuzzling your throat instead of staring at you at least.

“Home sweet...home,” Your voice whispers in a soft, gentle hush of breath and words, hands pushing open the door to the front, almost empty hall. “Still not sure how I ended up like this though. If I get in trouble it’s all your fault, Mr. Puppet.”

No response, not even as if he heard you. Well, it’s not as though it would matter anyway since you’re sure to be fired the next time you had to come in for a shift, which was Monday night. You gently pat the puppet’s back. That’s more than enough time to get some sweet, sweet sleep right? Deal with all those worries later, after you have enough rest to keep you steady on your feet. 

The fear is starting to wear off more and more with every step deeper into your apartment--it’s like coming down from a high of the pure, raw injection that was fucking Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza--a drug in itself for only the most foolhardy, the most daredevil, or the very poor and uneducated. With the crash of that dangerous drug comes the heavy, lingering sensation of exhaustion. 

The bed’s calling to you by now, whispering beautiful promises of warmth and comfort in its plush hug. 

“Do you even sleep?” You ask the puppet as you shuffle down the main hall. “Because I don’t know about you, but I….I gotta sleep. Haven’t gotten any for at least three days.”

No response, but also no surprise. You just pat his back again with gentle, careful fingers almost caressing down his thin body, and slip inside your bedroom where that beautiful bed is waiting for you like a lover. Nothing else catches your focus--not the fact you need to change, or take a shower, or even pick up the dirty clothes and tossed few soda cans on the floor from your hurry to start your shift before. Just….the bed, that’s the only thing in your vision.

At least the little guy has enough sense to loosen his grip a little bit so you don’t fall down in an odd way, or worse, accidentally fall /on/ him. When finally settled, you’re laying on your side and not even caring enough to pull the comforter above you because you’re just so damn exhausted. 

The puppet’s beside you, pressed up close. His arms are up against your chest, and his legs are down, curled and entwined around your own like corkscrews which is more than interesting enough. When your eyes glance downward you find him holding onto that Foxy plush, with his small, claw-like fingers moving around the doll’s stubby limbs in a fashion that….makes you want to watch for a few seconds. 

He really seems to like that doll. You still can’t believe the coincidence that it was that he even assumed you were giving it to him--there isn’t a plan to tell the puppet otherwise of course, not after all that’s happened in the span of one measly shift.

You weren't stupid when you started the job. You knew the rumors, the stories, the tales and theories. You can even remember hearing the anchor's on the local news channel talking about it. You did your best not to pay all that much attention to it, no matter how much it haunted the halls of your school--because it was so close, the place so close to where you lived, a quick car ride across the highway and…

All the negative PR was all smothered down again when the company reopened early this year, just before you graduated. They held a huge hiring campaign, even going so far as to let high-schoolers apply and not start till the summer (when they officially opened it up to the public). You just happened to be one of those people from school--someone looking to make enough money to get by day to day when you found out you weren't rich or smart enough for college.

God, you aren't paid nearly enough to handle this. Broken, silly animatronic characters--that's all you were given in the job description to watch for. They had bad programming, couldn't be shut down at night and....you were already hard-pressed to believe that much. But....now this? This thing against your chest isn't a robot--or at least it's a robot that's got one hell of an AI, one you've never seen before. There was something more to the establishment than you would have ever thought, starting the job--something you almost with you could go back and never do. But at the same time it intrigues you, makes you question and wonder what is hidden behind those walls.

These aren't the thoughts you need to deal with right after work--you need to sleep, rest up, try to make up for all the deprivation of shut-eye over the last long week of work. Thinking about these deep, almost disturbing questions isn't going to help that nor answer any of them.

The puppet’s mask turns up those empty eyes to look at you, as if he can read your thoughts on the matter. Those soft, white dots hang in your eyes, matching your gaze almost mesmerizingly, an ironic comfort and assurance considering what his presence had caused. You can’t help but stare back. His limbs only briefly tightening around yours, so quickly that it’s only meant as some sort of...reminder, a reassurance.  
What you hear as you fall asleep is nothing more than a whisper. It’s a soft, gentle noise that falls with you into the abyss of darkness and slumber, but it does plenty enough to offer you some comfort, knowing, no matter how silly it is, that you’re not falling asleep completely alone.

“...good...night…”


	2. Coworkers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reader takes a shift from Jeremy, loses the puppet on multiple occasions, and realizes there's a lot more mystery to that single, small animatronic than they ever gave him credit.

There is a beauty in waking up. A distinct, wondrous sensation that comes both with being conscious and understanding of the world around you, yet completely and blissfully unaware of time passing or the open space between your fingers before you fill them with sheets and blankets. In what could feel like an eternity, the process of waking up is what one might even describe as like a newly formed butterly crawling from its dark, dry chrysalis shell. There is indeed a beauty of it all. Fluttering eyes and and the warmth of the bed beneath your folded form, where your skin had rest and your limbs pulled in tight to your torso beneath the comfort and protection of your blanket.

However, this morning it seems that beauty also comes with the sharp, loud blaring your phone’s ringtone echoing in your ears from your bedside table. It does plenty to rocket you from bed, those once-fluttering eyes now shooting open, and your body to jolt so that it’s sitting up as if a bolt of lightning had struck right through your spine. 

A thick, sticky haze hung over your eyes and thoughts for a few moments as everything shifts from dreams to reality. Confusion is the next thing that sets in, wondering where the hell you are and what’s going on even as you lean off the edge of your bed to reach over and grab the buzzing piece of annoyance that is still going off on the loudest volume possible. 

It takes quite a lot of clumsy, almost numb fumbling before you manage to even grab your phone from the top of the nightstand. What time is it? Hell, what day even is it? While the tattered tail-ends of your dreams are still slipping away from your mind as consciousness begins to further emerge, your fingers flip open the phone and find an unfamiliar number flashing over the screen.

You pick it up anyway, putting it up to your ear just as the rest of your mind comes back to you.

“H-Hello?” Your voice hangs heavy, and you hope very well that the other person hears how you so obviously just awoke. 

“Oh h-hey!” The voice responds, friendly and mildly familiar. “Hey uh--is this the other new worker. At Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzaria? I hope I got the right number. I uh--I asked Adrian since I needed to get your permission first and--” 

“Uh, it might be a good idea to tell me who you are,” You mumble, falling back into the bed, letting the blankets toss up around you from the weight of your body. It’s just so warm and comfortable--if you weren’t already so focused on the phone call at hand, you probably would fall right back into the soft, welcoming embrace of slumber.

The man on the other end of the phone started to stutter even more. “Oh! Oh I’m sorry--it’s Jeremy, I was the other guy during orientation last week--the other night guard?” The name did plenty to flash his face behind your eyes--recognition came right after. You remember him--not actually from the fact that he was your coworker, but instead from the fact that you knew him from high school.

Jeremy had never been a close friend. He wasn’t someone that you spoke to on a daily basis, but certainly neither a guy you’d be adverse to talking to when the situation presented itself. Hell, one of the only times you spoke extensively with him was ironically during your Junior year, when the first Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzaria had been investigated and later closed down. You knew his name and was mildly familiar with him as a person in school, but it wasn’t until the two of you were the ones hired to eventually fill the two night guard positions. 

One could imagine the amusement and irony that lay in both of you working there together--he certainly couldn’t help but bring it up when you both were sat at the table in the front of the restaurant on your first orientation day.

“Oh yeah, yeah that’s me--didn’t recognize your voice on the phone,” You say quickly, stretching out your arms and legs. Jeremy chuckles on the other end.

“No problem--uh hey, I was calling because--and I totally know this is short notice--but something’s come up with my apartment lease and whatnot and I had to set up a date with my landlord to get everything worked out right.” 

“Nothing horrible right? I thought you already signed it and were getting ready to move in.” He had found one at least by last orientation, and couldn’t be quiet about it for more than a few seconds of silence--he had been raised by the state since he lost his parents, and was happy to live on his own for the first time ever. You couldn’t blame the enthusiasm since you felt the very same when you found and leased out your apartment a couple months back. “What do you need from me anyway? I can drive you somewhere if you need.” Jeremy, as far as you know, has yet to get himself a car. 

“Oh no, thanks,” The man said, another chuckle on the end of the line as your eyes start to wander across your ceiling, then down over to your clock on the bedside table. It’s just past 2 in the afternoon. Your stomach starts to grumble, a need for food setting in when you realize the last thing you ate was almost 12 hours ago and was little more than gas-station snacks. “Actually, what I was hoping for was if you could take my shift for me. I already worked it out with Adrian for the schedule--you work my shift so I can meet with my landlord, and I can come in late for yours. I mean, I’ll be working the night shift soon anyway when they get a few more people hired on day, so Adrian said it wasn’t a huge problem.”

“Hmm….Well, that’s true. I wouldn’t mind seeing what the restaurant's like when there’s actual people in it than those creepy animatronics.” A smile creeps over your lips as you laugh, a subtle joke that isn’t all that subtle to you when you think about it too much. 

Speaking of which….

“But uh,” you continue offhandedly, sitting up in bed so your eyes can start searching around the room. Searching for that thin, dark body and that eyeless mask. “What day this week are we talking about?”

Jeremy made another noise of confusion before the sound of flipping pages filtered across the phoneline. “This...Thursday? It’s the 6th, the same day we have our first meeting with Scott.”

“That’s when we get our new schedules right?” 

“Yup!” Jeremy replies, sounding more than a little cheerful as you push yourself off the bed to start looking a bit more closely around the room for that mischievous little puppet. You hadn’t realized until that moment that he had last been laying in the bed with you before you fell asleep. Where was he? “It’s actually right at the end of my--well, your shift anyway, so it should work out. All you’ll need to do is stay an hour later to catch it. Adrian said that we’ll get our full-time schedules and personalized uniforms and badges and blah, blah...yanno, all the stuff that comes with the new job.”

Nothing underneath the bed. Nothing inside the closet. An expression of pure confusion starts to crawl over your face. That confusion starts to turn into aggravation when the room is revealed to be utterly empty.

You move out into the main hall, which leads down into the living room. Well, maybe not a ‘living room’ since it’s more an adjoined, empty space that connects to the kitchen and could as easily be called a dining room, but since it’s the spot you have the television and old couch, living room felt more appropriate. You come in just in time to find the Puppet--evidence that everything from yesterday wasn’t a dream, as you might have hoped. And though that should have offered some level of relief in knowing there wasn’t a stray, mildly sentient animatronic roaming around your apartment, it certainly wasn’t a relief to come into the livingroom to find him shoving something in his open, empty mouth and down his throat. 

“No!” You shout instantly, running into the room and trying to grab the unfortunate item either from out of his hand or mouth. Regardless of your speed and obvious anger towards the action, the item--which had been a prized little doll you got from a friend upon the graduation of high school, more sentimental than anything--has officially been swallowed down into the nothingness of the puppet’s thin body. The worst part is that upon a quick inspection, there’s no bump that might otherwise lead you to believe it was inside him--instead it looks as if it vanished into a black hole. And the puppet himself feels as though he’s a bit smug, maybe apprehensive with your hands all over his torso, but as physically expressionless as he’s been thus far in a literal sort of way. “That was really important to me oh my god why did you eat that I swear to fu-”

“Uh...Hello?” Jeremy pipes up from the other end of the phone, which somehow remained tucked against your shoulder and ear in the duration of the chaotic manhandling. Oh fuck, your breath stopped as you tried to come up with an explanation for your outburst.

“M-My cat!” you try in a sheepish brightness. “He just--uh, just ate my...bracelet.”

“Your...bracelet?” Jeremy questioned, as if it was totally abnormal for cats to accidentally eat them. Which it was--shit. “I thought you said you didn’t have any pets last time we spoke?”

Fuuuuuuck, think on your feet. 

“I uh--yeah. It’s a….long story,” You turn your head around in effort to communicate your disdain to the puppet in a hard glare, only to realize he’s not even on the couch anymore. He’s floating out of the room and towards the kitchen before you fully realize he just up and left, not seeming to care about your obvious outburst like a curious little kid. You make sure to be a lot quicker in following him, fearful that he might shove some of your utensils in his mouth or something. 

Much to your sanity all the puppet does is just sit himself down and start tapping his hands on the linoleum. He seems satisfied with the sounds his fabric hands make, enough that you feel confident in sitting down beside him and lean back against the fridge. 

“I...was coming home from work a few days ago and I got the attention of this...little cat.”

“And you’re taking care of him?” 

“Yup,” You chirp, rolling your eyes in gentle amusement as the puppet starts hitting his pointed feet to the linoleum as well. It’s a series of soft taps and pats of an almost lyrical, rhythmic sense that makes you smile. “Sweet thing, it just….getting used to things. Chewing things he’s not supposed to but uh--yanno, that’s what I get for picking up a stray.”

“But that’s really good of you,” Jeremy said warmly, amidst the sound of what you’d assume to be clanking dishes. You’re wondering if it’s appropriate to carry the conversation on as if it was supposed to be more than one coworker asking to take the shift of another, but Jeremy seems genuinely interested enough as his voice carries on. “Hey uh, if you are planning on keeping him, I can hook you up with a local clinic that offers really cheap vaccinations since it runs on donations and stuff. One of my buddies is an employee there and can get your cat all up-to-date….I mean, again if you plan on keeping him. I know it’s expensive to keep a pet and--” He rambles on for a few seconds more, as if he’s unsure about everything he’s saying, worried enough that it makes you laugh. 

“Yeah,” You eventually say, turning your face to the puppet as he starts losing interest in the floor and gaining it in your cabinets. There isn’t a lot of worry in him ruining anything in there since there’s nothing to ruin--you could hardly afford more than a pot and some pans. He seemed plenty happy to crawl in them instead. “...I’m thinking on keeping him. Thanks, for the tip I mean. I uh--I might look into it soon.” 

“Oh--good! Uh--what’s his...name?” More clanking, followed by a splash and a curse. It doesn’t sound like he’s hurt, so you give him a moment to put the phone back to his ear before you shrug and realize a vocal answer is more appropriate.

“I dunno yet, still...deciding. Gotta pick a perfect one, maybe see what sorta personality the little scruff has first.” You start crawling towards the cabinets--which had been closed for a while--to try pulling the puppet out before he started making a home of them.

Jeremy hums after a moment. “That makes sense. Just let me know if you need help though, with names. Oh! Bring pictures of him in sometime too, I can definitely give you some ideas for really badass names like...Scorpion or Megatron.”

You pause, blink, and let your thoughts roll over Jeremy’s gentle (and very honest) suggestions, though when you think how they would be all applying to the puppet (since you really didn’t have a cat), it makes you chuckle. You reach for the cabinet door and pull it open just as you respond. “Those aren’t names for cats, Jeremy.” 

“But they’re still badass. You can’t deny that both Scorpion and Megatron are very badass characters.”

You open your mouth to say something, but the words are quickly forgotten when your cursory reveal of the inner cabinets show nothing. No puppet. You start to open the rest of the doors across the floor-level, finding them all empty. You knew he’d climbed in there--you saw the puppet with your very own eyes, right there a moment ago and--fuck.

“What?”

You must have said the curse out loud, because Jeremy sounds nothing less than confused on the other end. More looking, and still nothing. The only things within the lower cabinets are the pot and pans that the Puppet seemed happy to ignore.

You growl in annoyance. “I uh--I gotta go,” Your voice is honestly aggravated, that’s not something you have to make up. “The cat’s getting a bit bratty again, playing some intense hide-and-seek at the moment and nothing of my stuff is...cat-proof.” because Puppet-proof wouldn’t even begin to make sense, honestly. Nevertheless, Jeremy seems more than understanding of the issue. He tells you with a quick few words that he’s going to tell Adrian of the switch, and reminds you again of the shift you’re taking later that week.

You barely register that you’re saying ‘talk to you later’ before you’re stuffing the phone into the pocket of your pants (still in your temporary work uniform, ew), and snapping into an instant search of every room. First the kitchen, then the living room, hall, bathroom--they all come up with nothing more than the near-depressing emptiness that comes with being a poor post-graduate with a new job.

But then you get to your bedroom. And of course, as if there is nothing better in the world than showing up your every sense of both sanity and physics, the puppet’s sitting there on the bed, staring at you with those black eyes and white pinprick pupils. He looks as if he’s been waiting for you. 

“Goddamit,” You groan, realizing for the first time that morning that yes, some sort of supernatural shit at work you didn’t want to waste time thinking about last night. “You’re not able to like…teleport or something are you?” You ask as if you actually expect him to answer, which is crazy enough. “Because if you can, please try to keep that to a minimum. You gave me a heart attack out there.” 

Silence, but only for a few moments.

“Heart attack?”

“Oh my god,” you praise, raising your hands up into the air. “He /speaks/.” The following few minutes has you explaining to him, A) do not eat anything, and B) do not leave the apartment. You tell the puppet both of these seemingly loop-proof rules because it is becoming more and more apparent that a shower would be a wonderful source of relaxation and cleanliness after everything that’s happened in the last twelve hours or so. The warm water, the soap, the utter sense that for at least ten minutes, there’s nothing else in the world to care about but whatever thoughts came to you.

And god, those ten minutes were perfect. You cleaned yourself up without too much haste to get out, enveloped in a warm embrace of comfort and relaxation.

Only to find the puppet breaking the very first rule with your home phone nearly down his mouth.

* * *

The rest of the day was surprisingly relaxing, all things considered. You wound up calling in a pizza to eat, and spend the majority of the evening watching some some bad drama show that you really didn’t know the name to. The characters seemed so bad that they were hilarious, and they were flung upon with little mutters and attempted jokes that you hoped that the puppet found funny, or at least understood to some degree as he sat beside you.

Monday came way too quickly, mostly because of the advantage taken of getting all the sleep you wanted that night. You had to near-literally drag yourself out of the bed that next morning, prepping for a long afternoon (and night). What surprised you thought was that you did wake up so late in the day. It was almost 3 in the afternoon when you got up, all extra hours of Z’s accounted for, and your phone….oddly silent. 

You had been prepared for Adrian to call you that morning, ask you about the absence of one of the animatronics, but he hadn’t. Your second worry was that he had indeed called, but you missed the sound of your phone or forgot to turn up the volume. Nope, no missed call in your history, none after Jeremy when he called Sunday. 

Did he...not notice? As odd and almost completely unreasonable as that seemed, it looked like one of the only options available. The man could have simply not attributed it to you yet, of course, or he could be waiting to scold you in person and maybe threaten you on the prospect that you were already making huge mistakes on your first week of the job. 

Because seriously, how could someone miss the Puppet from the prize corner? Kids saw him all the time--or at least you assumed they did, whenever they got enough tickets to get one of those plushies. 

But the absence of your boss’ call completely paled in comparison when you came to a quick realization, from a notice to a subsequent search, that the puppet was also gone. Not gone as in not in your bedroom, but in another room stuffing something else down his throat. No. He was completely and utterly gone, vanished entirely from your apartment and leaving you terrified for what happened to him. 

Did he climb out a window, walk out the door? There was a million reasons for you to be thoroughly worried before your shift that afternoon and evening, barely able to think of anything else than the fact that you’d done two horrible things. First, you straight-up stole one of the animatronics from your place of employment. Second….he was gone, lost, without a single way for you to track him down. 

Fuck.

The entirety of your evening is spent in eternal anxiety for whether you’ll be fired or not in the end, if they actually realize it’s you who somehow allowed the puppet out of the building. They can’t….sue you right? Of course they have all ability to fire you, but you have no idea if money could come into the equation, which would surely knock you down into nothing but a dark spiral of dept and even further depression.

Don’t think about that.

You come to the restaurant a few hours after the sun’s set, long enough that the night sky has gone murky and dark, the stars a splatter of white in its otherwise emptiness. The moon’s full tonight, and that’s nice--it gives enough of a glow to the pavement leading up to the building that you don’t feel al that unnerved by your anxiety or general unease about the place.

Jeremy’s by the door waiting for you--he can technically leave at the end of his shift, but he’s stuck around and giving you a bright, wide smile. 

“Hey!” He says cheerfully, which is enough to put you off into some level of confusion. You came almost expecting a look of sympathy, a ‘hey man I heard about what happened, Adrian was pissed when he found out’, anything other than the joyful smile he flashed instead. “The place was /really/ busy when I came in.” 

“R-Really?” You ask hesitantly, not sure whether to come right out and ask what’s gnawing on your brain or lead him into saying something on the subject. “Uh--....lots of tickets and prizes given out?”

“Oh yeah,” Jeremy says, waving his hands around a bit as if he’s trying to give a physical measurement to his words, brushing back his unruly blonde hair when it starts to whip into his eyes. “Everyone was getting a lot of tickets today--I actually had to man the prize corner for an hour when it got bad enough. The puppet--” and that’s it, your heart stops and you know he’s going to put together the puzzle pieces and ask you for the reason and-- “--seemed so happy!” 

Wait. You blink and look at Jeremy for a few moments with confused eyes. “Repeat that again,” you say after a moment of corrupted thought.

“...I said the puppet seemed so happy today--is there...something wrong?” 

“Oh, no!” What? Seriously? So the puppet had been at the restaurant this whole time? Had he just up and left your apartment that morning because he knew he had to be back? Your brain is amazingly fast to come up with a fake reason nevertheless, cover up that relief with wonder instead. “I was just wondering what you meant by him being happy--it seems a little odd. He’s an animatronic, he can’t be...happy.”

Jeremy shrugs after a few awkward moments; the blush on his cheeks is obvious even in the blue-glowing moonlight on his otherwise tanned skin. “Just...had a feeling. You know. I mean, remember when you were a kid and you feel like your stuffed animals had feelings? Like, when you dropped them or kicked them ‘cause you were angry, they got hurt and you had to apologize?”

Despite your answer having been fake, you can’t help but find some endearing respect in Jeremy’s response. “Yeah, okay--I think I get where you’re going on that. I’m happy that the day went well then--anything I need to know for the night?”

Everything else went by as it had the rest of the last week. Jeremy gave you a brief update on things, told you how some kids found Mangle’s body in the service room and got her even more roughed up than before and they lost a few pieces. 

“I don’t know why they hate that one,” Jeremy mutters to himself as he starts leaving. “Hate it, love it--I don’t know what it is but just why /that one/.” 

“Not your favorite?” You laugh as you unlock the door and he’s just stepping a few meters away to his old little bucket of bolts car. A few years older than yours, with plenty of issues that even you can see from the outside--and that was ignoring all of the rust. Jeremy opens the driver’s side door just as you opened up the front door of the restaurant. 

“....No, not at all actually,” He laughs. “I like Chica, actually.” 

“Didn’t know you were into anthro chickens, Jeremy~” You tease, but dash into the building and lock up the door behind you just fast enough to hear his flushed shouts from outside in a definite rejection to your words. No matter what, the two of you wave goodbye before he drives off and you make sure the door’s locked. After that you take a deep breath, then turn to head towards the office to start your shift. Just another night at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria.

If there was a sense of ‘normal’ that you could apply to your shift, tonight was certainly that--just...normal. No broken music box winders, no mishaps, nothing. All the animatronics did their rounds and cycles as you’d come to learn them (though Mangle seemed a bit more hostile than before), and you’d even habitually continued to wind up the music box every time that the counter fell low. It was a pleasantly normal night, with every hour coming with just a little more relief, a little more sense that everything was going to be alright.

You don’t even have a sleeping scare near the end there, fully filled on hours of slumber from how late in the day you slept this morning. It was just….normal. As normal as a shift could get when a vast array of animal animatronics were plenty prepared to invade your private space and murder your face off if you gave them the opening. 

When the alarm went off to signal the end of your shift, you couldn’t have been anymore overjoyed in the endeavor and accomplishment of another night as a notch on your metaphorical belt. Getting everything cleaned up doesn’t take more than a few minutes, since you didn’t bring in any food or coffee for the shift--too busy being nervous about the puppet to bother stopping at the gas station down the road for anything. 

You stride through the halls feeling more confident than ever in your abilities as a successful security guards--so much in fact that you just about miss what’s on the floor of the entrance into the Prize corner as you pass by. After backtracking and looking again, you see that it wasn’t something your eyes made up in some sort of glint of the rising sun outside filtering through a window. 

The item laying down on the floor is a doll. /Your/ doll, the one that the puppet had so happily swallowed down Sunday afternoon. It sits on the linoleum floor just as the Foxy doll had been as the proxy that began your interactions with the being. It’s only when you kneel down to pick the item up that you feel the papery-obviousness of a note that’s been attached to the back. 

 

“Sorry :)” It’s written crudely, but legible enough to understand both the apology and smiling face doodle off to the side, all of it in a bright red crayon. The doll certainly doesn’t look any worse for wear, no marks or skuffs, just...as it had been when you lost it. You’re so lost in the gentle realization of the doll and the message attached to it that you nearly miss the movement out of the corner of your eye, deeper into the prize corner.

A little face with black eyes and white, pinprick pupils staring out at you from within the giant present box, just for a few moments, long enough for you to glance up and catch the gaze and realize that yes, he does look pretty happy. 

The puppet doesn’t follow you out of the building that time, which serves both as a relief and a cause for curiosity, but the doll in your hand (along with the note) seem plenty enough of a reason to believe he hasn’t...forgotten anything between the both of you. You stuff both in your jacket just before locking the front doors.

The sun’s on the horizon at the end of your shift, and it’s probably one of the things you like about being the night guard--seeing the sunrise. There was something relaxing about watching it slowly drift up into the sky, light falling on the ground like a warm shower that lit everything up and shoved the darkness away for the next night to replace. Though through work was the only reason you’d be able to see the sunrise, it’s a pleasant sight, especially interesting as you sit there against the wall of the building.

It’s probably just habit this time since Jeremy waited for you, but you’re waiting there against the wall for a few minutes, maybe five or ten at most, for Adrian’s truck to come up into the parking lot. A minute later he’s getting out and giving you a wave.

“G’morning,” he says, only upon getting close enough for you to hear him in that mellow, soft tone of voice he always seems to use. “Good to see you’re in one piece after another night.” 

“Oh, just wait until you see the animatronics,” You laugh, pushing yourself back up onto your feet just as Adrian raises a brow and gives you a look that is...well, a lot of his expressions are hard to decipher between seriousness and not, so you just laugh sheepishly until he laughs along.

“I’m just kidding--it’s good no matter what. It’s something to be proud of, being good at this job. Calls for a lot of crap and you don’t get paid enough.” The sun’s light seems to finally fall over one of the trees that surround the building, because the warm glow is over Adrian’s bright green eyes enough that he’s groaning and cupping a hand over his face. “Anything you need to report about the shift?”

It takes a few minutes to explain things as best you can remember. Mangle’s a bit hostile. Chica’s beak and eyes got loose and fell off sometime during the night, and you also made a point to thank him for getting the remote winder fixed so quickly for the music box. Adrian seems particularly pleased with the last bit, as his smile brightens. 

“Fixed it myself,” He says, with just enough simple joy behind the statement that you mirror the smile. “Always been good with tinkering, I think it came with the job, since before this restaurant opened up we had to fix up things as we could ourselves.” He took in a deep breath, almost lost to memories as the breeze picked up just enough to start whipping his dark hair around. You could never really tell if black was its natural color, but you surely knew the purple tips weren’t. “In fact, I got pretty good at fixing the animatronics at my job at the old building, back when I….worked there…” 

The drift to his words caught your attention, mostly because he then dropped off completely from speaking. You were so used to him being able to ramble on about a subject (almost like Jeremy) but his sudden, awkward silence must have been obvious. Adrian started shuffling over to the doors to unlock them for the beginning of his shift without saying anything else, which only made you even more curious, but whatever--it was 6 in the morning after all, not everyone had to be a morning person.

You’re a few meters away and heading towards your car when Adrian’s soft voice calls you and makes you stop. What did he need? WHen you turn around to face him again he has the door opened and he’s halfway inside, but he’s looking at you with a new, serious look in his eyes. The panic that quickens your heart lasts for only a moment when he speaks.

“Don’t forget about the meeting this week, alright? You and Jeremy are getting your regular schedule and new uniforms!” He’s smiling all cheerful again, waiting for your confirmation of something akin to ‘I won’t!’ before he’s in the building and leaving you to your thoughts of puppets, dolls, and new uniforms. 

You hope the new one looks better than the one you have now--purple, even when it’s a shade of lilac or something, really isn’t your color.


End file.
